THE NEW CANAAN RUN- Chapter 3A
by femmefan1946
Summary: This was originally going in much later - about Chapter 15- but my copy of the Map of the Verse arrived and it looked more logical here.


**SEVENTH LEG**

**PAQUIN — KAYLEE'S PARENT'S PLACE**

The warm sun woke Kaylee as the baby shifted restlessly in her makeshift crib. She slipped out of bed and brought her to the dresser, changed her diaper and slid quietly back into bed while her husband slept on.

As her daughter nursed, she looked out the window at the day beginning. Her father was already returning from the barn, where he had opened the doors for the cattle to walk to their meadow after milking. He carried a bucket of feed for the chickens which he scattered in their pen.

She could hear her mother downstairs in the kitchen, and smell coffee from the trees her brother had planted with the money he chose instead of a fancy wedding when he married the el-Rahbi girl. The marriage hadn't worked, but he was doing well with the coffee plantation.

She shifted her gaze to her husband. He looked so young when he was asleep. Over forty, not much younger than her Daddy, but asleep his angry bitter look was washed away. He snorted and turned towards them, his big hand caressing her thigh.

The baby was asleep again, too. Kaylee kissed the red hair that was starting to curl as it got longer. Derry had had a brown thatch from the day he was born, but BabyGirl had nothing but ginger fuzz until she was a year old. Both had striking blue eyes though. Their daddy's legacy, since her own family ran to brown or hazel eyes. The baby yawned, releasing her nipple, and settled in for a nap.

'Yeah, leave your mother all lopsided,' she whispered. Moving carefully so as not to wake Mal, she returned the child to her crib.

'Mornin, lil mama.'

'Hey. Hope we didn't wake you. You was deep in it.'

'No, just started thinking it was time to wake and here you beat me to it.'

'You sleep real deep here. Better than on _Serenity_.'

'Do I? Funny, sleeping better away from home.'

'Yeah. You don't wake in the night. Or get up and walk around.'

'Wouldn't be polite in someone else's home.'

A breeze stirred the thin cotton curtains. The scent of the farm blew in. 'That's nice, ain't it? All them smells? Grass and fruit blossoms.'

'The cow midden, the chicken coop.'

'Reminds me of …' Mal stopped.

'Of Shadow? Of your ma's ranch?'

'Reckon.' More footsteps passed the door to Kaylee's childhood room. They had pushed two beds together, once used by Kaylee and her older sister, but Mal was too long and had to curl his legs a bit to fit. 'The smell of coffee too. Ma gave everyone coffee and steamed milk at breakfast. And porridge and congee. And boiled eggs.'

'Mum will just do fresh milk with the coffee. I used to love it, sometimes straight from the cow before Daddy made the milking machines. Can't touch it now, course. I hope the kids don't get intolerant of milk.'

'It's a good life here.'

'The farm keeps us. And Daddy has that little bush lot for retirement and wedding portions for us kids. But he just scrapes by with the machine shop. Not enough outworlders needing his help and most of the locals is pretty handy. Also just about as broke as us.'

'Not much scope for you.'

'Flying is more innerestin. Meeting new folks all the time. Seeing new keeping _Serenity_ in the sky is a challenge.'

'She's a good ship.'

'She's my good old girl.'

'Near on seventy years she's been flying. Sturdy.'

'We should get up.'

'I even like the smell of the manure.'

'Member them beeves we moved from Persephone? What a stink that was.'

'Just cause they was cooped up and confused. Not really a problem in the open air.'

'We should get up soon.'

'Yeah. Is she snoring again?'

There was a knock on the door. 'Mummy, Capt'n, kin I go fishing with Wray and En-lai?'

'We'll talk at the breakfast table. Have you washed?'

'Course! Pits, bum, face, hands,' As if an eight year old could't be trusted to keep himself clean.

'Go down to breakfast. I'll be right down.'

'We hafta get up.'

'I ain't had my morning kiss yet.' Which took a few more minutes than planned and left them both a little breathless.

'Ready for the day?'

'Gotta wash up first. She still napping?'

'Can I wash you? '

'We're already gonna be the last ones down.'

Kayla poured water from the pitcher into the convenient basin. She gave herself a fast sponge bath and tossed on underclothes and a pretty floral dress from the closet. 'I haven't worn this in fifteen years. Look it still fits.'

Mal still only dressed in his khaki trousers, embraced her as they both faced the dresser mirror. 'You never change. Still my smiley lil mei mei.'

'Mmmph. I'm going down now. If she wakes bring her, if not leave the door open so we can hear her.'

"Mr. Frye's gotta contract for us, sir.'

Mal was leaning on the pasture fence, looking at the young steers browsing on the green meadow. Two smaller cows nuzzled their calves and an elderly horse leaned against a tree covered in pink blossoms, scratching.

'Peaceful, ain't it,Zoe? Like nothing ever happened. No war, no Unification, no Alliance.'

Zoe waited silently.

'What kinda contract?'

'There's a biological station bout thirty klicks up the road. Kaylee's sister-in-law's sister works there. They got a cargo to take to Paquin.'

'Biological?'

'I didn't ask.'

Linda Mobuto was tall and slender, with a warm golden skin and black curls. She shrugged the hood of her clean suit off as she entered the reception area of Purple Emperor Biologicals. 'Have you been offered tea?' she asked.

'Yes, thank you,' replied Zoe.' The receptionist asked.'

'Let's go into my office then. Rand, send in the tea when it arrives.'

She buzzed them into the inner offices through a different door than the one she had entered. 'This is a small enterprise. Pretty hands on with a very specialized workforce.'

'What do you do?'

'We breed bugs. Insects, spiders, moths and butterflies, mosquitoes.'

'Skeeters?'

'They serve an important niche in the ecosystem. We also breed sterile males, so when yet another outbreak of malaria comes along, we are ready to break the life cycle.'

Mal nodded. He'd seen how malaria had decimated troops during the Unification War. Without centrally run efforts to contain the outbreaks the results had killed as many as the enemy. And malaria, which had been fought to a standstill thousands of times over the centuries, continued to turn up. Unlike diseases with a short period between infection and death, it simmered quietly in unvaccinated populations, waiting to mutate and spread.

'Are mosquitoes the cargo?'

'Something much prettier. You'd be carrying Monarch butterflies to Greenleaf. And they would be carried as pupae, so there should be no difficulty.'

'Sounds almost too easy.'

'Well, yes. And not too bulky either. We expect that you will be able to deliver with a 97% success rate. That is that 97% of the pupae will be viable on landing. That's our success rate here at the butterfly farm.'

'What might cause the success rate to be lower?'

'Not keeping the pupae in the proper conditions of warmth and humidity. But those are basically well within the comfort zone for human beings too. And if the butterflies emerge too soon, they could damage themselves trying to fly in a contained space, or starve if there is no food available.'

'How long do they stay as pupae?'

'About nine to fourteen days. That's not too predictable, and we would be loading three day olds — so you'd want to deliver within a week, to be safe.'

The receptionist knocked and brought in a tray with tea and cups.

'This is from the tea plantations on Greenleaf. where you will be delivering the butterflies. They spend their winters in those mountains.'

'Perhaps we can find a cargo of tea there when we've dropped off yours.'

would not have the cargo ready for four more days. She invited Mal and Zoe to visit the laboratories where they grew their crops and was pleased when they asked if they could bring the children. They returned the next day, and while Mal negotiated fees and Zoe discussed the specialized care that might be needed, Kaylee and her mother supervised a visit for Emma, Derry and three of the Frye cousins.

The kids were enthralled by the tour, and En-lai was particularly proud of being allowed to test a new mosquito repellant, a test that entailed sticking her coated arm into a sealed tube filled with dozens of the pests. That the repellant turned out to be inadequate didn't seem to bother her, and the lab workers were happy to give her antihistamine cream to soothe the itch.

Kaylee spent much of her time with her father, helping him with the few jobs he had been able to find and updating him on developments in their field that she had learned and in some cases invented. She was particularly proud of how she had increased the efficiency of Serenity's HVAC system by using the ship's grey water as a coolant.

The Fryes had a laissez-faire attitude to what the children got up to. On the whole, if they showed up at meals and didn't cause too much destruction, they were not watched too closely. Derry joined the younger group happily. They ranged from about four to around ten, boys and girls together, with the older ones sometimes helping the littlest ones join in the play and sometimes spelling off to watch them while the older kids found more complicated games.

Emma's long distance relationship with the Frye girls became tighter. They were a quiet well-mannered gang of hellions. And Emma quickly emerged as their leader, abetted by River who fit happily in with the much younger girls. When the girls came up with some fantastically nefarious plan, it was River who filled in the details.

'A_y, there's the wonder of the thing! Macavity's not there!_' she would say.

Jayne spent some time in the little town nearby, where there was a brothel, but mostly he visited Mrs. Frye, helping with household tasks. 'I think he was well-trained by his own Ma,' she remarked to Kaylee. 'He does a nice job with dishwashing and with weeding.'

'We don't need much weeding on Serenity, but he is very thorough about dishes.' Kaylee mused. 'Doesn't stop him from complaining.'

'He tells me he does more laundry and dishwashing that anyone else.'

'No, we all have the same … well, we do use chore tickets when we play Tall Card, and Jayne is not real good at Tall Card.'

Zoe spent a lot of time sunbathing, not realizing that her chosen private spot had been noticed by some of Kaylee's older brothers and cousins.

Mal went riding.

The live-bio containers for the butterfly pupae were as tall as Jayne and easily two meters square.

'Twenty can of Butterflies. How many bugs are we carryin?' he asked.

'Nearly a million , give or take,' Purple Emperor's shipper replied. 'We sell 'em by weight.'

'Let's get'm safe to their new home,'said Mal. 'River take us out of this world.'


End file.
